Negativity
by Valaina Wynn
Summary: One-shot. When a man is found skinned in his own closet, the CSIs are on the case for serial killers with vampire-like tendencies.


**A/N: Just a one-shot I wrote for an assignment for my forensics class. I'd say second season or so. Enjoy!**

Michael Pierce was having a pretty good day, if he did say so himself.

He got a promotion at work, gave blood at the business's blood drive, and was on his way home to make a surprise dinner for his wife Samantha before she got home from her nursing job at the hospital.

The house was dark and quiet, but that didn't bother Michael much. He and his wife both worked and their children were grown, one in college and one out on her own.

He turned on the kitchen light and began pulling out ingredients. Though he didn't do it much, cooking had always been a passion of Michael's. He could make almost anything, and he wanted tonight's meal to be really special. No specific reason...just because he loved his wife.

Michael opened a cabinet to search for the pots and pans he needed. Ah, there it was! All the way in the back. Michael had to stand on the tips of his toes, but he almost had it...

With his attention on the pot, Michael missed the baton sailing toward his head.

He was unconscious before he hit the floor.

"Brass, what do we have?" The police officer looked up from his notes as Grissom approached, kit in hand.

"Four-twenty. Wife called it in." Brass gestured toward a parked ambulance, where a woman was sitting in the back, a blanket around her shoulders. She cried into her hands as another officer tried to console her.

"Sara," Grissom called. She walked over from where she had been grabbing supplies from the car.

"Yeah?"

"You see the woman over there in the ambulance?" She nodded. "That's the vic's wife. Go over and talk to her, get some fingernail scrapings, just in case she touched anything."

"You got it."

Sara walked away. Grissom watched her pat the woman on the shoulder and say something to her. Whatever it was, it worked, because the woman took her hands from her face and held them out to Sara.

Grissom turned back to Brass. "Take me to the body."

"Alright, this way. But I gotta warn you - it's pretty gruesome."

"I've seen a lot."

"Yeah, I know...but I don't think you've seen anything like this."

It turned out Brass was right. Grissom was excellent at hiding his disgust at crime scenes; in fact, sometimes there was no disgust at all, just fascination. But this...was something else entirely.

The man hung upside-down from a beam in the open living room closet. What little skin he had was flayed to pieces, hanging in strips from his bloody frame.

Grissom steeled himself, training his expression into something passive and unreadable. He opened his kit, pulled on some gloves, and got to work.

This body was like no other. Besides the fact that it had no skin, there were also...

"No defensive wounds anywhere on his body," Grissom noted. Brass looked over. "Look at his hands, where there's still skin. No bruises or cuts on his knuckles."

"You'd think he'd fight back if someone was trying to do something like this to him," Brass snorted.

"Unless he couldn't." Grissom examined the body's head. "Just as I thought. He's been hit in the head. Pretty hard, it seems, judging by the softness of the spot. But I don't think it was a killing blow."

"Well, if that didn't do him in, what did?" Brass asked, jotting notes down on a pad as he spoke. "Was he skinned alive?"

"Judging by the lack of blood, I don't think so. In fact..." Grissom glanced at the carpet below the body. "There's no blood at all. Not even a drop."

"Weird."

"Hmm...hey, wait a minute. What's this?"

Using a pair of forceps, Grissom reached into the back of the closet and picked up a single rubber glove. He dropped it in a plastic evidence bag, labelled it, and stood up.

"I'll take this back to the lab. Maybe we can get some prints off it."

"Alright," Brass said. "I need to stay and finish a rough sketch."

"I'll call in the others to help finish processing the scene so we can get this body to Doctor Robbins," Grissom said. "An autopsy should tell us what happened to this poor man."

"You were right, Grissom. The head wound didn't kill him." Doc Robbins looked down at the body before him and sighed. "Poor guy. Terrible way to go."

Grissom looked at the coroner questioningly. "What? How did he die?"

"Well, he died of blood loss, but...not in the usual way."

"What do you mean."

"Look." Robbins turned the body's head and pointed to the throat, which still had a bit of skin on it. "You see that?"

Grissom nodded. "What are they?"

"Well, it's an incision - pretty big one, too...maybe from a surgical scalpel?"

"Why would it be on the vic's throat? He was incapacitated by a blow to the head."

"Grissom, I'm disappointed in you." Robbins shook his head. "Don't you see? The man is hung upside-down, alive, his throat cut..."

One could practically see the light bulb blink above Grissom's head.

"Someone drained his blood?"

"Correct. And whoever did knew exactly what they were doing." Robbins pointed to the incision again. "See how clean and even the cut is? No one can do that on the first try. You know it took me months to perfect the "Y"-incision on-"

"Thank you, Doctor Robbins." Grissom stopped the coroner before he could begin babbling. "I'd better go tell the team the autopsy results."

He grabbed the reports and left the room. Robbins sighed and covered the body.

Grissom didn't have to search hard for his team. Everyone -even Greg- was sitting in the break room, sipping coffee and bouncing theories off each other.

"Maybe a jealous lover?" Sara suggested. Catherine nodded in agreement. "Although, I don't why the skinning was necessary."

"Maybe it was the wife!" Greg said excitedly. He was always a sucker for a twist. "She was mad...I don't know, for some reason...and did the deed. Do you know how much skin goes for on the black market?"

"Ew, Greg!" Sara put her hand over her mouth. "I think I might be sick."

"He's got a point," Nick said from his spot next to Warrick. "But maybe-"

"Mm-hm." Grissom cleared his throat, and everyone turned. "The autopsy results came back - it seems Mr. Pierce died when the suspect slit his throat and drained his blood."

His colleagues looked shocked, as they should. This case was the most unusual they had had in months; why shouldn't there be more surprises?

"Now, if you are all finished, maybe you could stop with the theories and get some actual results? Greg, shouldn't you be analyzing that glove from the scene?"

The young man was unflustered. "Already done, Sir. If you'll follow me..." He walked out of the break room. Grissom sighed. He turned back to the rest of the team.

"The rest of you...get on the evidence. Go back to the scene if you have to."

They nodded. Grissom left and made his way to the lab, where Greg was waiting.

"Now that you're here, let me give you the results." Greg pulled a sheet of paper from the table in front of him. "Catherine was able to pull a partial print from the glove and I ran it through the database. No matches, unfortunately, but look." Greg pulled up a spreadsheet on his computer. "I analyzed the glove. It's not latex, which is odd, because usually people just pull a brand off the shelf and go on their way, or companies receive mass shipments-"

"Greg." Grissom cut him off. "What's your point?"

"Oh, right. Sorry." Greg gestured to his computer screen. "Anyway, it turns out that the glove is one of those special latex-free brands. It's made from polychloroprene - synthetic rubber, if you want the common term. Not shipped in mass quantities because most people aren't allergic to latex, so a lot of companies don't bother." Greg was looking pretty pleased with himself at this point. "And to save you the trouble, I also found all the stores in the Las Vegas area that carry these gloves, and which ones were bought where when."

"Thank you, Greg." Grissom took the paper from his colleague, who was beaming. "I appreciate it."

"You're very welcome. Just come to me if you need any more help with-"

"I will." Grissom left the lab and nearly walked straight into Catherine.

"Oh, Grissom, there you are," she said. "Since you're here, I have something for you. Apparently the vic -Michael Pierce- isn't the first man to be found like this."

"Oh?"

"Well, he's actually the fourth victim. Bodies -all male- have been found all along the West coast with the same MO. And, as we already know, the most recent was here in Las Vegas."

"So whoever's doing this is moving."

"Looks that way. And here's something really weird - all of the victims have the blood type O-negative. Really rare, really specific." Catherine shook her head. "This case just keeps getting stranger and stranger, doesn't it?"

"You could say that," Grissom replied. "See if you can find anything -maybe an organization or a club- that's been moving up the West coast in recent months."

"On it."

And as Grissom watched Catherine walk away, he silently agreed with her - this case was certainly turning into one they wouldn't soon forget.

Catherine was getting frustrated. She wasn't getting any conclusive results so far. None of the organizations seemed to fit.

Paws and Claws Adoption Agency only dealt with pets.

The Society of Educated Women only dealt with...well, exactly what the name implied.

And the American Red Cross only dealt with-

Wait.

Catherine scrolled back up. She had a sudden hunch. It could be a long shot, but in a case like this, she supposed anything could be possible.

She clicked a few links, checked some dates.

And had to restrain herself from whooping with joy. As it was, she pumped her fist in the air as she read through the website.

The American Red Cross held blood drives across the country. There were many branches in many places at one time, but there were only a few vehicles that travelled along the West coast at any given times. And, according to the stack of papers on her desk, the Red Cross blood drive dates matched those of all the victims' deaths.

"This is it! For once the answer didn't include digging through sewers or dumpsters or-"

"You sound excited about something."

Catherine looked up from her computer to see Sara standing in the doorway, grinning. "Get an answer?"

"The best answer. Come see."

Sara glanced at the screen and nodded. "So the dates match the deaths of the victims?"

"That's right."

"So it must be someone working at the blood drives."

"We just need to find out who's been working at every single one from this squad of vehicles in the last six months.

Well," Sara said. "It shouldn't be that hard. I'll go make some calls and get some names."

"Alright, get back to me when you're done." Catherine stood up. "I think I'll go see how Nick and Warrick are doing at the crime scene. I need to get out for a while after spending so long looking at that computer screen."

"Whoever did this was really good at...well, doing it," Nick commented. "What evidence we found on our initial search was sparse, and now I'm just not finding anything at all."

"I feel you, man," Warrick said. "I think I've searched this closet about fifty times...nothing."

"I'm going to go look around the kitchen again." Nick put on a fresh pair of gloves. "That's where the vic was knocked out; maybe there's something in there we missed."

"Doubt it, but have fun."

Nick walked into the kitchen, where pots, pans, and various cooking ingredients were still spread across the countertops. There was no sign of a struggle, no utensils or kitchen items out of place...absolutely nothing to suggest that a crime had happened in this house.

'Except the body we removed from the closet yesterday,' Nick thought drily. He poked around a bit, but found nothing new.

Nick sighed, and was about to give up when something caught his eye. The hair was almost completely hidden by a pan. Nick picked it up with tweezers from his kit and examined it - long, red, curly.

'Well, Mr. Pierce had short brown hair, and his wife is blond.' Nick dropped it in a bindle. 'So unless they have a maid who likes to cook in her spare time...'

"Hey, Warrick!" Nick headed back to the living room, where his friend was still searching for evidence. "I think I found something important."

The Red Cross volunteers were not at all what Sara expected.

It had been easy enough to get their names - Liza and Lizzy Mitchell. Identical twins. They were the only volunteers to be with the Red Cross during all available blood drives, although the organization certainly didn't mind - apparently they were very good at their jobs.

But Sara had done some digging on the sisters, and their histories had pretty much explained everything.

The two women were walking anomalies. Red hair, latex allergies (imagine that!), and to top it all off...the unfortunate souls were inbred. Sara had discovered why, but she preferred to get the story from the twins themselves for authentication purposes.

And they were all too happy to share. After all, they knew they were caught. There was no reason to lie.

"Our mother was an angel," Liza said.

"Her brother was an absolute scumbag," Lizzy finished.

"He thought he could do what he wanted."

"He thought she was his to take."

"So he raped her-"

"-And then we were born."

Liza had to hold back tears. "Our mother had hemophilia."

Lizzy was already crying. "She bled out. Didn't survive giving birth to us."

"So, when we were old enough-"

"-And could do something about it-"

"-We did." Liza sighed, perhaps remembering. "The bastard never knew what hit him."

Sara glanced at Catherine, who frowned. "So why did you kill all those other men?"

"Isn't it obvious?" Liza asked. "They had what our mother didn't. She needed blood, but of course there wasn't enough to donate."

"O-negative blood," Lizzy supplied. "Maybe she could have lived if she had gotten a transfusion in time."

"So we take it from them-"

"-Because they don't deserve it."

"We sell the blood - Three hundred and thirty-seven dollars a pint on the black market, can you believe that?"

"We keep a little for ourselves-"

"-Enough to get by on-"

"-And donate the rest to the National Hemophilia Foundation. Maybe if we gave them enough money-"

"-They could find a cure to the disease that took our mother from us."

There was only one more question Sara wanted to ask.

"So why did you skin the victims?"

The twins laughed, but there was no mirth in either sound. Lizzy was the one to finally answer.

"Just a little personal revenge against the world, I guess. I mean, look at us. After what we did to those men-"

"-We're not the scariest-looking anymore."

"I'm glad this case is wrapped up," Sara said. "What those twins did..." She shuddered.

"Their story is sad, but they could have something else," Catherine replied. "Something less...vicious."

Everyone agreed.

"Hey, but I was right about that black market stuff," Greg said with a smirk.

"I'm glad all your knowledge on the illegal buying and selling of human body parts has finally paid off," Nick said with a chuckle.

Grissom sat back and watched the members of his team laugh and joke with each other. Even though he would never wish a death on anyone, he had to admit that sometimes these types of cases were better.

After all, what better than a series of brutal murders to bring everyone closer together?


End file.
